Narrative of the Most Remarkable Events Which Occurred In and Near Leipzig eBook

the French, on their return from their disastrous Russian
expedition, had occupied Leipzig, and were beginning,
as usual, to levy requisitions of every kind, an express
was sent to the Russian colonel Orloff, who had pushed
forward with his Cossacks to the distance of about
20 miles, entreating him to release the place from
its troublesome guests. He complied with the
invitation; and every Frenchman who had not been able
to escape, and fancied himself secure in the houses,
was driven from his hiding-place, and delivered up
to the Cossacks, who were received with unbounded
demonstrations of joy.

About this time a Prussian corps began to be formed
in Silesia, under the denomination of the Corps of
Revenge. It was composed of volunteers, who bound
themselves by an oath not to lay down their arms till
Germany had recovered her independence. On the
occupation of Leipzig by the allies, this corps received
a great accession of strength from that place, where
it joined by the greater number of the students at
the university, and by the most respectable young
men of the city, and other parts of Saxony. The
people of Leipzig moreover availed themselves of every
opportunity to make subscriptions for the allied troops,
and large sums were raised on these occasions.
Their mortification was sufficiently obvious when
the French, after the battle of Luetzen, again entered
the city. Those who had so lately welcomed the
Russians and Prussians with the loudest acclamations
now turned their backs on their pretended friends;
nay, such was the general aversion, that many strove
to get out of the way, that they might not see them.

This antipathy was well known to Bonaparte by means
of his spies, who were concealed in the town, and
he took care to resent it. When, among others,
the deputies of the city of Leipzig, M. Frege, aulic
counsellor, M. Dufour, and Dr. Gross, waited upon
him after the battle of Luetzen, he expressed himself
in the following terms respecting the corps of revenge:
Je sais bien que c’est chez vous qu’on
a forme ce corps de vengeance, mais qui enfin n’est
qu’une policonnerie qui n’a ete bon a
rien. It was on this occasion also that the deputies
received from the imperial ruffian one of those insults
which are so common with him, and which might indeed
be naturally expected from such an upstart; for, when
they assured him of the submission of the city, he
dismissed them with these remarkable words: Allez
vous en! than which nothing more contemptuous
could be addressed to the meanest beggar.

It was merely to shew his displeasure at the Anti-Gallican
sentiments of the city, that Napoleon, after his entrance
into Dresden, declared Leipzig in a state of siege;
in consequence of which the inhabitants were obliged
to furnish gratuitously all the requisitions that he
thought fit to demand. In this way the town, in
a very short time, was plundered of immense sums,
exclusively of the expense of the hospitals, the maintenance
of which alone consumed upwards of 30,000 dollars per
week. During this state of things the French,
from the highest to the lowest, seemed to think themselves
justified in wreaking upon the inhabitants the displeasure
of their emperor; each therefore, after the example
of his master, was a petty tyrant, whose licentiousness
knew no bounds.